My latest rant

Sometimes I just need to rant. Be afraid, you are my captive audience.

They’ve messed with the chocolate, now they’re buggering up the biscuits

Griffins has moved production of some of its biscuits to Fiji but didn’t come clean on the decision until pressed by the press (a sharp-eyed reporter from the Dominion Post noticed the “Buy New Zealand Made” logo had disappeared from the packaging).

They reckon it’s all because demand has exceeded the Auckland factory’s production capacity. Yeah, right. Maybe it was time to spend money increasing the production capacity? You want us to spend our money on your products, do the decent thing and provide jobs here in the market where you make your money.

Cadbury has also made the offshore move with a lot of its products and it looks like the punters aren’t happy about it. Fair enough, too: the Minties (now made in Thailand) aren’t as chewy as they should be and Moro and Crunchy bars are going to be made in Aussie. Come on Cadbury, those are Kiwi icons! The decision to do away with Sparkles, Snifters and a few other oldies but goodies didn’t win the company any brownie points, either.

It’s interesting that Cadbury did back down on the whole palm oil thing, finally deciding to stop using the evil stuff in its products after a huge backlash from customers. If you ask me, it was a pretty stupid move to go changing recipes for established old favourites in the first place: you don’t go messing with a mixture that’s worked for years (just ask Coke!), and then there’s the moral implications of using an ingredient so controversial.

I’m guessing Cadbury must have taken a huge consumer hit during their wee foray into palm oil and that many chocaholics discovered the joys of that other iconic Kiwi brand (no palm oil and still made here): Whittakers. Let’s face it, Cadbury wouldn’t have decided to tour the country, handing out wads of free chocolate, if they didn’t have some ground to make up.

Oh, and for what it’s worth, if you fancy a snack of that other Kiwi favourite of chip and dip, you’ll be able to make it using NZ-made Maggi onion soup mix and but that can of Nestle reduced cream with the label proudly proclaiming itself ”The original Kiwi dip”  is made in Australia.

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Must try harder

I’m disappointed. According to Transparency International, New Zealand is the least corrupt nation in the world.

Damn.

Using its swish-sounding “Corruption Perceptions Index for 2009″, Transparency International says the three MOST corrupt nations are Somalia, Afghanistan and Myanmar.

Our neighbours across the ditch took out 8th place. Way to go Aussie!

Apparently, the index ranks by perceived levels of corruption, determined by “expert assessments and surveys”. So I”m sure it’s accurate … well, maybe.

Okay, what exactly is an expert assessment in this case? Do they send an email to all our politicians asking if anyone’s offered them $20 and a free goat in return for certain special considerations? Do they just look at People In Authority (cops, the aforementioned politicians, people with briefcases, goat herders etc) and figure if their eyes aren’t too close together they’ll pass muster?

Oh well, however it works, let’s hope our People In Authority make a better effort next year. Bottom of the list? Not good enough.

I have a soapbox and I’m not afraid to use it

soapboxI know I’m not exactly one of the most politically correct people you could stumble across. And I can be a bit of a bitch sometimes. Oh, okay, a lot of the time. 

I’m also pretty opinionated and and tend to vent a lot. That’s one of the benefits of having a blog: I can come here and have a rant about stuff that bugs me, getting it out of my system without inflicting it on my nearest and dearest. Then you kind people can either: 

  1. Totally ignore me.
  2. Nod sagely and leave a comment telling me I’m rather, er, sage (I like sage, it goes well with chicken, the other white meat … )
  3. Tell me my opinion is nothing more than a big, steaming pile of crap.

It’s a win-win for all of us, I get to vent and you guys get to either ignore, agree or disagree. Sometimes you even get to vent back at me. 

However, I am starting to wonder if perhaps I need a special category for my rambling wee rants (update: you’ll now see that there is in fact a special category for my rants). 

Either that, or I might need to drink more.

MetService, getting it wrong since forever

Okay, so I know I’ve been whinging about the state of the weather here over the past couple of days, what with the thunder, lightning, rain and blustery winds. However, I figured I was entitled to a whinge with all that coming on top of the big ol’ earthquake we had last week and all the aftershocks.

sunAnyway, according to the MetService weather info on Stuff, just an hour ago it was raining here in Invercargill. And just 12 degrees (strangely, 2 degrees higher than the maximum temperature of 10 degrees they say we will get today).

During the early hours of this morning, yes, it was truly bucketing down. And way colder than 12 degrees. But for most of today the weather has been nothing short of brilliant: Blue sky, white fluffy clouds and warm, warm, warm. So warm, in fact, that I’ve turned off the heating because our living room was like a sauna. And I have both windows in my office open to let in a breeze.

Not bad for the middle of winter.

PS: Mother Nature, I apologise for calling you a PMS-ing bitch earlier.

Give us this day our daily it-might-not-be-safe-but-you’re-getting-it-anyway fortified bread

So, not long now until we start getting doses of folic acid forced upon us.

For those of you who missed this particular gem: from September, bakers here in New Zealand must (by law) add folic acid to bread under the new food standard adopted by New Zealand and Australia.

The whole thing was signed off by the former Labour government in what then-food safety minister Annette King called “a triumph for humanity and common sense”.

Common sense my arse.

While folic adic during pregnancy helps prevent neural tube defects in babies, the experts reckon the average pregnant woman will have to eat about 11 slices of bread a day to reap the benefit.

Yes, 11 slices. But wait, there’s more.

Some research in Britain and Ireland links use of folic acid as a dietary supplement to a growing incidence of several types of cancer.

Current food safety minister Kate Wilkinson — said she was “not a fan” of the folic acid requirement and shared concerns about the potential health risks — has agreed to go ahead with the plan because she reckons we have to, since it’s a standing agreement with the Aussies, but now she’s also finally said she also want a review. However, that review won’t take place until a month after we get stuck with the folic acid additive.

Bakers around the country aren’t happy with the situation, either.

Surely it’s up to the pregnant women themselves to ensure they have enough of everything. Surely that’s why we have a healthcare system that looks after pregnant women.

From what I’ve read, there aren’t large numbers of women giving birth to babies with affected by a lack of folic acid and there would be few women eating enough of the soon-to-be tainted bread to get any benefit so why the hell should the rest of the population be put at any sort of cancer risk?

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Ripped from the (old) headlines

newspapersWhat is it with all the anti-news stories about lately? I thought news stories were meant to inform us, to educate and offer us fresh facts and opinions. 

I can sort of forgive “Words can ease pain, I swear” from the Sydney Morning Herald because I guess while most of us already knew dropping the F-bomb in response to physical pain was helpful but it’s nice to see scientific proof to back it up. 

However, did we really need a news report to tell us (again) that meat pies are bad for us? Didn’t we already know they are loaded with fat and other nasties, just itching to clog up our arteries and make us extinct? And we certainly didn’t need an Aussie consumer watchdog group to tell us this time around. 

Speaking of Aussie, the news that Australian employers are ditching Kiwi workers in favour of Aussies as the recession bites and jobs become less plentiful should come as no surprise. It’s nice to see them showing loyalty to their own citizens (okay, so that  might not be a politically correct comment on my part, but tough). Now, if they were ditching Aussies and taking on Kiwis instead, that would be a story. 

Oh, and about that recession. It seems the banks have a bit of wiggle room when it comes to lending rates. No shit, Sherlock. The bastards are making huge profits while the average Joe Bloggs is struggling. Parliament’s finance and expenditure select committee has released a scathing report on the matter. Apparently they’ve “lashed out” at banks and been highly critical. Oooh, I bet the big, nasty bank managers are quaking in their boots. 

I’d be more impressed if all that lashing out and criticism was accompanied by the waving of a big stick and some action.

In case of emergency … cross your fingers

I see there’s another drama involving our not-always-efficient 111 emergency services phone system. 

This time, it’s come out that police 111 staff have been reprimanded for their failings: 

  • One Wellington staffer swore at and was rude to a caller (on their second warning);
  • A South Islander call-centre worker had a good old nosey through the National Intelligence Application, which lists criminal history (on their final warning);
  • Another Wellingtonian failed to send officers to respond to 19 “serious complaints” despite telling the callers police were on their way.

The first two cases are bad enough, although I can probably forgive the nosey parker more easily than the rude bugger because I guess it’s human nature to be nosey but not human nature to swear at people who are having a crisis but it’s almost unbelievable that this isn’t a first offence for either worker. 

However, not sending help while lying to the poor bugger on the other end of the phone is unforgivable. 

The news report on Stuff says police bosses are trying to sack the worker responsible for failing to log the 19 “serious complaints” but police communications centre acting national manager Superintendent Kelvin Powell reckons some of the calls  were simply to ask advice and others to report bad driving. 

I’m confused, were these “serious complaints” or not? 

Either way, it’s ridiculous that they are “trying” to sack a worker who surely has failed in the most basic execution of their duty: take a call and send help. I would have thought such a monumental cock up would mean it should be pretty easy to show them the door. 

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What’s a life worth? Not as much as we thought

I’ve been quietly stewing for the past few hours about the news that convicted rapist and murder Liam Reid has had his sentence reduced on appeal. 

Reid is the loser who raped and murdered deaf Christchurch teenager Emma Agnew, then just nine days later raped a student in Dunedin. 

He has the sort of disgusting criminal history you would expect of someone capable of those crimes. He’d also been on trial before for abducting a woman, sexually violating her, and attempting to murder her. He was acquitted of those charges in October 2002 but was convicted of fraudulently using the victim’s bank card while he was on the run, when he knew she had gone to the police. 

Back then he used a different name: Julian Heath Edgecombe. That was the name he had when he was my neighbour. I knew then that he wasn’t one of the gene pool’s success stories but never dreamed he would go on to commit such awful crimes. 

When he was convicted of the rape-murder of Emma Agnew and the rape-attempted murder of his Dunedin victim he was sentenced to preventive detention with a minimum non-parole period of 26 years. 

That seemed almost fair. Life with no possibility of parole would have been better but this was the next best thing. 

Now, while the preventive detention part of the sentence has been retained, the minimum parole period of 26 years for the murder conviction has been cut to 23 years and the 26-year sentence for the two rape convictions to 10 years for each charge. 

Why? Because the appeal court said in comparison with other murder cases where long non-parole sentences had been imposed 26 years was too long. 

Really? This low-life bowed and waved to the everyone in the courtroom when he was sentenced, he claimed his goal in life was to be a serial killer and rapist, he had 61 previous convictions for threats, assaults and two aggravated robberies. 

Okay, so with the preventive detention there’s a chance he might never get out of jail anyway but I’d rather have certainty. 

Twenty-six years isn’t too long. It’s not long enough. 

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